Charlot,Flathead chief,spoke to his people in 1876 about the white man,when the whites were attempting to oust them from their ancestral lands in what is now known as the Bittersweet Valley,Montana.

'Since our forefathers first beheld him,more than seven times ten winters have snowed and melted...We were happy when he first came.We first thought he came from the light,but he comes like the dusk of the evening now,not like the dawn of the morning.He comes like a day that has passed,and night enters our future with him. To take and to lie should be burned on his forehead,as he burns the side of my stolen horses with his own name.Had Heavens Chief burned him with some mark to refuse him,we might have refused himNo,we did not refuse him in his weakness.In his poverty we fed,we cherished him-yes,befriended him,and showed him the fords and defiles of our land. He has filled graves with our bones.His horses,his cattle,his sheep,his men,his women, have a rot.Does not his breath,his gums,stink?His jaws lose their teeth and he stamps them with false ones;yet he is not ashamed.No,no;his course is destruction;he spoils what the spirit who gave us this country made beautiful and clean... His laws never gave us a blade,nor a tree,nor a duck,nor a grouse ,nor a trout.....How often does he come?You know he comes as long as he lives,and takes more and more,and dirties what he leaves... The white man fathers this doom.-yes,this curse on us and on the few that may see a few days more.He,the cause of our ruin,is his own snake which he says stole on his mother in her own country to lie to her.He says his story is that nam was rejected and cast off.Why did we not reject him forever?He says one of his virgins had a son nailed to death on teo cross sticks to save him.Were all of them dead when that young man died,we would all be safe now,and our country our own.'

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_________________"A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass."- Teton Sioux proverb

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